


Grace, or The Story Of an Angel Without Wings

by littlelionleo



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Angel Q, Human James Bond, I've never written for this fandom before, Immortality, M/M, Religion, Religious Guilt, WHERE DID THIS COME FROM, a cute little church somewhere in England, angel au, for now, there will prbably be sex later on, this is general audiences, this is probably really sacreligious, what the hell am i doing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6088072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionleo/pseuds/littlelionleo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pain. From… my back?<br/>And darkness. Night? No, this was darker than night.<br/>I slowly came back to myself, wincing at the pain, and then remembering.<br/>I had fallen. I was on Earth.<br/>I had lost my wings.</p>
<p>Q fell from Heaven thousands of years ago. He has seen the rise and fall of thousands of cities and nations. So why can't he get this man out of his head? And why does he seem so familiar?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace, or The Story Of an Angel Without Wings

**Author's Note:**

> what am I doing

“There once was an angel. The world was newly created, as was Heaven, young and bright, but starting to waver, unsure what its path should be. So God created the angels, and filled them with His grace, and gave them each a task. Not all of them had their tasks to work on, for the world was still new, and their jobs had not yet come to be, so those angels helped the others learn their purposes. The angel who would one day preside over the building of houses helped another angel learn how to help the trees grow.

“In those days, the angels lived on Earth with the rest of life, as God watched from above and guided them. But there was one who never set foot on the surface, for he was younger than the rest, created to observe and foster beauty from above, and God saw no reason for the angel to leave His side.

“He had no job yet, so he gave everything he had to helping everyone else as well as he could from Heaven, and so helpful he was, that he was everyone’s favorite, even God’s.

“Eventually the other angels moved back to Heaven to work their parts of the world from afar, and once they were there, they loved the angel who had helped them even more.

“And the time came for that angel to do the job he had been created for. He cared for all beauty, and the world flourished under the guiding’s of the angel’s soft hands, and for a long time, everything was peaceful and everything was good.

“But then arrived man, and man was the same as all the other animals, but God had given man an attribute that the others did not have. Man had the ability to self-doubt. And that self-doubt, the angels saw, could be a weakness, or strength. It encouraged man to rethink decisions, but also to overthink those same decisions.

“And that self-doubt led to anger.

“Now, anger was not a new concept to the angels. They saw it in the animals defending their young, in the loss of a family member, in the ‘injustices’ of creatures not getting to do what they wanted. Anger was nothing new.

“But with man, came something different. This anger wasn’t the sort of anger that the angels already knew. This anger was directionless, chaotic, toxic. Violent. It was an anger that God didn’t know how to handle. And so, he called his angels to leave. They could no longer make the difference that was needed.

“All the angels listened to God, and they abandoned their posts. Or at least, all the angels listened but one.

“For it was his job to care for beauty, and without him, he said, the world would become so much worse in its anger, and would soon fall apart. He had come to care for mankind, in all of its flaws, and the angel could not bear to be responsible for its downfall.

“God was angry, of course he was. How could one of his angels doubt him like this? And his, and everyone else’s favorite angel, none the less.

“So God gave the angel a choice. He told the angel, the guardian of beauty, that he must choose between Earth and Heaven, that he must choose between abandoning the world he had come to love so dearly, or losing his wings to walk the Earth.

“The angel made his choice.”

A small voice piped up under the priest’s feet.

“What did he choose, Father Q?!”

The young man smiled at the upturned faces sat around him, for he knew they all had heard the story from him many times before.

“Why, the angel chose man, for he had seen the beauty possible in humanity, the wonder in its organized chaos, and he could not bear to sit by and watch it crumble.

“And before God could speak another word, the angel tore his wings from his back, so that he should fall to Earth to tend the beauty he had seen from above.”

“What happened to him, Father?” another, calmer, voice spoke, and the young priest looked up at the light filtering through the stained glass window overlooking the church.

“I suppose,” he spoke softly, at though to himself, “that he must still be among us, working to preserve the beauty that’s left in the world…”

The man momentarily trailed off, lost in his thoughts, before rousing himself, as though from a dream, standing and shooing the young children out the door with heartfelt promises of more stories next week, though he knew they would ask for the same ones as always.

He turned away from the door as the last child left, only to have his thoughts interrupted by a new voice, one calm and steady, but worn, like the rocks on the nearby sea shore that had weathered so many harsh winter storms.

“I’ve never heard that one before.”

The priest turned back to the doorway that the children had just vacated, left open for the spring breeze, and saw a man.

He was middle-aged, handsome, very much so, but worn with the lines of someone whose life has been anything but easy.

“It’s not a story often told.” The priest let a silent question hang at the end of his statement, betraying his own curiosity. Where had he seen this man before?

“The children seem to enjoy it.”

“That they do, Mr.-?” Why did he know this man?

“My name is Bond, Father. James Bond.”

\----

Pain. From… my back?

And darkness. Night? No, this was darker than night.

I slowly came back to myself, wincing at the pain, and then remembering.

I had fallen. I was on Earth.

I had lost my wings.

I was in a forest of some kind, leaves under my body, but nothing soft enough to mask the pain in my sides and back.

My body. In Heaven we existed as energy, pooling in spots to manifest ourselves, but now…

I was trapped.

I blinked open my eyes, slowly.

It was night.

The pain in my back arced and skittered around. Wounds from the loss of my wings, then.

I was struck by sudden pain, this time emotional, as I realized that my wings were truly gone. I would never fly again. There were remnants of my Grace left, enough to do what I had come to do, enough to help foster beauty, but not enough to change myself or even to ease my pain. I could tell I was not mortal, per say, but I wasn’t invincible either. The wounds on my back needed tending, or I could die.

I forced myself to rise and began to walk.

My first days past in a painful daze, as I made my way to a farmhouse where they tended to my wounds and fed me. I had forgotten that this body would need to eat. That, at least, eased some of my pain.

I convinced them that I could not remember what had happened to me. I had never lied before, but I had to protect myself.

I gave them beauty as my thanks, for it was all I had. I left it in the brightness of their kitchen, the fresh flowers on the windowsill, and blessed their young daughter with the eyes of an artist so that she could create beauty just as I did. I often wish I had been able to do more for them, but over the years I have kept track of them, guided them to happiness as much as I could.

I left their house after a few days, insisting to the family that I would be okay, that I was healing and could find my own way.

So I wandered.

I spent my first years on Earth learning of culture, religion, and what it was like to be human. I worked to pay my stay at monasteries, farm houses, and the back rooms of businesses. 

Comfort was never an issue for me. I observed the world and the people and animals I met, and so I learned.

And so my Grace grew.

Eventually I began to take jobs at churches of all kinds; places where they would offer me a warm bed, for these places of worship were infused with beauty I had never seen before.

They had a Grace of their own, places of worship did. It was a beauty I could feel, a beauty that nurtured my own Grace, and slowly, I started to become an angel again.

I gained abilities I hadn’t had even in Heaven, and slowly, I began to feel the people praying.

I had fallen from the Heavens thousands of years earlier, and I had seen cultures and societies both rise, and fall. Over the years they called me many names, Aphrodite, Venus, Lakshmi, Xochipilli, Cliodhna, Hathor, Freya, and so many others.

I personally liked to call myself Q.

I eventually gained enough Grace that I didn’t have to be in a place for me to foster beauty there, so I became a priest in a small village that I liked.

It wasn’t that the religion was more right or true than any other, just that I liked the people and the land. The church was in a very flat area of northern coastline, where most of the land was only a couple of feet above sea level, and was covered in picturesque grassy fields, covered in snow in the harsh winters, but full of sheep and butterflies in the warm summer months. It was, well, beautiful.

The town was small, but the people were wonderful. The church was well cared for and if my sermons were a little unorthodox, the folks of the village didn’t seem to mind. I hated to lie, but gently pushing thoughts of how long I had been in the town out of the villagers minds let me stay there in peace.

I had been there in that town for forty years when I first noticed his presence on Earth. 

Strong, chaotic, a dangerous job as the best spy in the world. So how did he manage to preserve his love of beauty, even among all the destruction in his life? 

Who was this man?


End file.
